Ghosts in Closets
by fowl68
Summary: Richter sees ghosts every day. They walk beside him, have conversations with him. His ghost doesn't like to go away. It taunts him and grins at him behind innocent eyes. He hovers nearby and whispers the secrets to the universe in Richter's ear.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything!

**Author's Note:** Got the sudden urge to write Aster and Richter again. I love their relationship. I think it's fascinating.

-/-/-/-

_We do not remember days; we remember moments. ~Cesare Pavese_, _**The Burning Brand**_

_-/-/-/-_

Richter sees ghosts every day. They walk beside him, have conversations with him. It's the same ghost all the tame, all pale-haired and bright-eyed, but the person looking at him from those eyes is not the person he knew. It isn't Aster.

Aster smelled of apples and didn't like the frosting on a birthday cake. He didn't like asparagus or taking medicine. He liked the taste of sour orange peels and bitter grapefruits. He took his coffee with lots of cream and some sugar. Aster was mischievous and charming in his own roundabout way. He was laidback and his favorite place to study was perched on the sea wall of Sybak.

This boy isn't Aster, despite the fact that he looks like him. This boy stutters and stumbles over his words and his feet, he flinches at a harsh word and he doesn't like looking people in the eye. It makes Richter's stomach twist because he remembers that he used to be like that before he met Aster. Before he'd been told that half-elves were worth something, that they could _accomplish_ something.

But sometimes, the boy will do something that is so very _Aster_ that Richter snaps at him because Aster is dead and the dead don't come back and he wants his ghost to go away.

But Aster's mischievous streak ran deep and his ghost didn't like to go away. It taunts him and grins at him behind innocent eyes. He hovers nearby and whispers the secrets to the universe in Richter's ear.

"R-Richter?"

The boy still stutters too much, like his words run into each other as soon as they hit the air. "What?"

"…Wh-what was Aster like?"

Richter freezes, staring at the boy. His ghost is snickering at him, but the boy isn't meeting his eyes, glancing up between his lashes at the older man. "Why do you need to know?"

Aster—no, the boy, Emil—shrugs. "I was curious."

Aster had always been curious. Too curious, especially for his own good.

"He wasn't anything like you, if that's what you want to know." Richter lies. Sometimes, Emil acts exactly like Aster, but it was only sometimes. As though the body still remembered the movement, but the mind didn't.

"So then what _was_ he like?" When Emil is stuck on a topic, he doesn't let it go.

"…Brilliant. Insane." But the latter part was spoken with the gruff fondness reserved for friends.

"Yeah?"

"Mm. And he was a coffee-addict. You never saw him without a mug or a thermos."

Emil laughed and Richter wonders whether he imagines the flash of red in his eyes. Was Ratatosk laughing as well? Was he laughing at the inane human details that could pass in the blink of an eye?

Emil doesn't ask after more details. Richter thinks that perhaps his ghost has decided to be merciful, to spare him the bittersweet memories.

How wrong he was.

The memories come in his dreams and he can remember them in painful detail.

_"Goddess, a body in a closet? What kind of idiot stuffs a dead body in a closet?"_

_ "Someone who doesn't have a biology department that likes to experiment?" Richter replied in the offhand manner that suggested he was paying some attention, but he was still focusing on the folder of papers in his hands._

_ Aster waits until Richter's finished with the page. It's winter in Sybak and it doesn't snow here, but everything frosts and gets generally icy. They're both curled up near the space heater, Richter with a blanket around his shoulders and Aster is lying on the floor underneath his own, more brightly patterned, blanket. They're comfortably rumpled, or so Rilena described this mood of theirs._

_ Richter finally looks up. "What body in which closet?"_

_ Aster held up the book he'd been reading and pointed to the paragraph. "This one. What kind of killer leaves a body in so obvious a place as a closet? Total nonsense. And then there's the characterization." He clapped his hands to his cheeks. "'Oh dear, the gardener's dead. And look! There's blood on the hedge clippers! Do you think it's a clue?'"_

_ Richter snorted, trying to keep the laughter in, but he couldn't help it and just let the laughter roar. "Seriously?"_

_ "Yeah! I swear, this writer doesn't know a damn thing about proper murders."  
"Are you moonlighting as a serial killer and not telling me?"_

_ "Of course not! Who else would I hire to help hide the body? I'm moonlighting as a detective because, according to this book, anyone with a lick of common sense can do it!" _

_ "You're getting far too worked up about this." Richter tells his friend before returning to his research papers._

_ "It's because of writing like this that the entire mystery genre has gone down the tubes." Aster sighed and set aside the book, rolling onto his back. "How's the paper going?"_

_ "People are idiots." _

_ Aster laughed. "Yes, yes they are. Why this time?" _

"_Most of this research is about completely pointless things. Why would someone care about what the effects of this drug do to pigs?"_

"_Bet you ten gald that they're the same people who wrote this book."_

_ "Still obsessing over that?"_

_ "This isn't an obsession! It's outrage at the lack of good literature in today's society! You, as a fellow scholar, should be just as outraged as I am."_

_ "Somehow, I think I'll survive."_

Richter tears himself awake, not wanting to see the memories anymore. But his ghost is still there in the sleeping teenager curled up on his bedroll. Emil is more innocent than Aster was. Than Richter can ever remember Aster being.

He can stay awake only so long before sleep calls him back, a so-seductive temptress. This time, there are no dreams. Only nightmares.

Nightmares of a red red place that had pale imitations of any other color. The place makes Richter feel small and he hates that feeling. But Richter would put up with being the smallest person on earth if only he could not see the body crumpled on the ground.

Richter half-expects Aster to get up, to snap out something witty or annoyed because that attack had _hurt_, but Aster doesn't move. Doesn't ever move again.

Until his ghost takes over his body, fills the bright green eyes with the red red that was the only real color in that place. It's still Aster's but the person doesn't walk or talk like him. Doesn't like mystery novels like he had.

But that doesn't stop the ghost from being there, from lashing out at Richter and it certainly doesn't stop it from hurting.


End file.
